A new film called Bitcoin is pushing one of the oldest questions in crypto back into wider view. The project does not focus on price charts or trading hype. Instead, it goes straight at the mystery around Satoshi Nakamoto, the name used by the creator of Bitcoin.
Important to Know
- Bitcoin stars Casey Affleck, Gal Gadot, Pete Davidson, and Isla Fisher.
- The story centers on Craig Wright and the long running claim that he created Bitcoin.
- A U.K. court rejected that claim in 2024, yet the subject still divides people across crypto.
A Bitcoin Story Built Around a Very Old Fight
Before Cannes, Patrick Wachsberger and 193 started international sales on Bitcoin, while Acme AI & FX said production had wrapped on the Doug Liman film. The project had earlier shown up online under the name Bitcoin Killing Satoshi. Acme AI & FX has called it the first fully generated, studio quality AI feature film, although the cast performs in the usual way and the digital work mainly sits in the environments and visuals added later.
Gal Gadot plays war correspondent Charlotte “Lotte” Miller. Pete Davidson plays blockchain investor Calvin Ayre. Casey Affleck takes the part of Craig Wright, and Isla Fisher is also in the cast. Nick Schenk wrote the script, while Ryan Kavanaugh and Lawrence Grey produced the film.
Rather than telling the story in a dry, technical way, the film leans into a conspiracy thriller setup. The official synopsis calls it: “A high-stakes conspiracy thriller that asks the question no one in power wants answered.”
At the center sits a familiar Bitcoin argument. For years, Craig Wright has said he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Many developers, researchers, and long time bitcoiners have rejected that claim, mainly because Wright never produced the kind of cryptographic proof people expected. In 2024, a judge in the U.K. High Court ruled that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, was not the author of the Bitcoin white paper, and had relied on false evidence. Reuters and the court ruling both laid that out clearly, which is why much of the Bitcoin community sees the matter as settled, not open ended.
Even so, the film clearly wants to reopen the tension. A longer project description frames the story around a man trying to prove he created Bitcoin while powerful interests try to ruin him. Another line from the synopsis says: “All this leads Lotte, and the audience, to the central question — If Craig Wright didn’t invent Bitcoin, why is a coalition controlling trillions in global wealth spending hundreds of millions and risking everything to destroy him?”
That angle is exactly why reaction will likely split in two. Some viewers will treat it as a mainstream thriller built around crypto politics and power. Others will see it as a reworked version of a dispute that legal findings and technical evidence already pushed aside. Either way, the film gives a much bigger audience a front row seat to one of the most bitter identity fights in Bitcoin history.
Patrick Wachsberger leaned into that pitch when he told Deadline: “This is an exciting and gripping story, set in the mysterious and high-stakes real world of crypto.”
The film is not really about how Bitcoin works day to day. It is about who gets to shape the story of Bitcoin, and whether that story can still be bent long after the network itself moved on.
Film and TV makers have gone after the Satoshi question before. HBO released ‘Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery‘ in October 2024, directed by Cullen Hoback, and Channel 4 later aired ‘Seeking Satoshi: The Mystery Bitcoin Creator’ in early 2025. Both projects tried to tackle the identity question from different angles, which shows how the search for the creator of Bitcoin keeps returning to screens even when no final answer lands.
By the way, this reminds us of Scottie Pippen who used to share his dream encounters with Satoshi, with the latter speaking directly to him. If you need to refresh your memory on this, have a look at what these Satoshi/Pippen spars were all about.